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5 Great Yoga Workshop Ideas You Can Implement Easily

by Guest Writer Rhonda Jones

Hosting your own yoga workshop is the next logical step for any Yoga teacher who develops a greater interest in the intimate details of the practice. After practicing for a while you come to realize that you are particularly good in some areas of Yoga practice. Maybe you make a name for yourself as the best teacher for niyamas and yamas, or maybe your students rave about how good you are at creating creative flows through giving adjustments. 

However, while hosting a workshop can be a great way to increase your income, you need to know how to have a successful workshop. The first step to having a great workshop is choosing a few core topics. This guide provides several topic ideas to get you started on executing and planning a yoga workshop.

Teaching Meditation

This type of workshop will teach the basics of how to lead meditation classes so that it can become a joyful and more accessible experience for the students. Taking either a practice, discussion or lecture format, you can cover several meditation techniques such as how best to teach visualization, counting, tantric micro-practice, and the basic breathing techniques that include classical mantra, and heart-centered mantra.

The Business and Profession of Yoga

This could be a very powerful workshop topic that a lot of Yoga teachers will be interested in. Some of the topics to focus on include marketing for yoga teachers, how to handle compensation, how to write your yoga teacher resume, yoga teacher livelihood and lifestyle, and professional ethics. For the most part, this will be geared towards beginner or intermediate yoga teachers and hence could also include how to position oneself as a yoga studio of choice, and the nuts and bolts of how to grow a Yoga Studio business, or even transition into private yoga lessons to earn more money.

Integrating Mind, Body, and Spirit

This workshop topic will teach the participants how to teach arm and hip balances to students with proper compassion, intelligence, patience, and integration. Unlike in your normal studio class, you will go deeper into the basic elements of the asanas and how all these come together to form the fuller asana. Teaching arm and hip balances, the participants will practice how to connect body and mind to develop personal freedom, confidence, and equanimity. It is always better to practice all the Asanas rather than just reading theory and hence this workshop will involve a lot of practical work in groups.

The Science and Art of Sequencing

One of my all-time favorite workshop ideas as it encompasses practically all the poses you could ever think of. How you go about this is to teach the participants about the basics of ordering poses. For many beginner yoga teachers, ordering poses is not quite as intuitive. As such, this lesson teaches why a certain pose comes before another based on subtle energetics, biomechanics, and functional anatomy. Another important part of this lesson is that it will teach your participants how to make their asanas deeply satisfying, accessible and as safe as they can be for their students. The best way to do this is by opening with a lecture on how the different poses follow each other. This will then be followed by small group discussions on the theoretical foundations of kinesiology, biomechanics, and functional anatomy and how these affect the practice of the asanas.

The Relationship between Inversions, Arm Balances and Core Practices

This workshop will provide an in-depth look inversion poses, arm balances, and application of core practices. Going deeper into the subfamilies, we can design a lesson on how to perform standing balances, external rotation, and internal rotation. The most common challenges that students face in the yoga class will be explored with the yoga teachers discussing their experiences in an open session. To make the lesson richer, also include how the teacher can best observe student challenges then using a variety of props modify the lesson to help the student get a lot more from the session.

Creating workshops is another great way to earn revenue and promote yourself as an expert yoga teacher.  If you need a little assistance in creating a great workshop, considering getting a copy of No Prep Yoga Plans. It contains some relevant information that can help you plan a meditation workshop, sequencing, or even integrating the mind, body, and spirit. I highly recommend No Prep Yoga Plans which has both a Inspirational and Faith-based version. No Prep Yoga Plans is like the Cliffnotes of Yoga for new yoga teachers. It contains yoga sequences, guided meditations, inspirational openers, and much more. To download a free sample, visit No Prep Yoga Plans. ((Add affiliate link)).

Author Bio: Rhonda Jones is the author of No Prep Yoga Plans, the new yoga teacher’s cliff notes. Rhonda created NPYP after feeling she needed an organized yoga resource book to help her create a transformative yoga class in minutes. NPYP comes in two versions: Inspirational or Faith-Based. Rhonda desires that all new yoga teachers start their yoga careers with confidence and provide seasoned yoga teachers tools for creating a yoga class that ministers to the mind, body, and spirit of every yoga student. 

Yoga Teachers: Finding Your Yoga Niche

6 Steps to Get Started Teaching Private Yoga Classes

by Guest Writer Rhonda Jones

Teaching private classes is the epitome of a Yoga teaching career due to several reasons. Private Yoga is a skill set very different from the group led classes as it is highly customized in design which makes it more satisfying both for the teacher and the student. Given that it is a better product all around, the student is normally willing to pay more per session, which means you as the Yoga teacher can add a lot to the bottom line. So how do you get started teaching private Yoga classes?

5 Successful Strategies to Market Your Yoga Classes

by Guest Writer Rhonda Jones

With more people coming to the realization of how important it is to have physical and mental health, the Yoga teacher has better opportunities to earn a good income from serving this target demographic. However, with so much opportunity in the space there has been an explosion in spirit guides, meditation teachers, dance instructors, and yogis. With so many practitioners out there standing out from the crowd has become even more important than ever.

Tips on Creating a More Mindful Yoga Class

by Guest Writer Rhonda Jones

Yoga is 99% practice and 1% theory, this is according to the words of the great Sri Pattabhi Jois.

A well-planned sequence is critical to safe practice, and for this reason, as a yoga teacher, you need to follow strict asana guidelines. The 1% theory is part of what explains the meaning of yoga, in other words, yuj – Sanskrit root that means to yoke or join body and mind. A yoga workshop has to go deep into the heart of each learner, which is why the theme you choose for the workshop determines the effectiveness of the art.

Here is a list of 5 yoga mindful ideas you can introduce to your students and how you can implement as part of the yoga plan:

1. Embracing change

Human beings are complex organisms. We are built to develop, grow, and eventually adapt to almost any circumstance. According to the law of Karma, we are constantly changing each moment, every day. Responding to these changes effectively leave an imprint on our consciousness.
Yoga students need to reflect on changes that happened in their own lives. As a yoga teacher, you’ll then be required to offer some mindfulness practice. Students should connect with their body and spirit before moving to a set of heart-opening poses.

2. Expressing gratitude

Expressing gratitude is the genesis of a healthy mind and spirit. Instead of investing most of our energy on the negative, you need to be thankful for the positive that life brings. Grace is often elusive today than before as we are mostly stuck in traffic including personal commitments. 
A sequence of standing poses as well as balancing using visualizations and verbal cues can be used to implement gratus’ – Latin for grace – among the students. For example, allowing the students to express gratitude by inviting them to participate in an act of kindness. It can be random or planned.

3. Playing the edge

Everyone needs a healthy ambition to achieve the best out of him/her. Playing the edge is what enables you to push harder in every situation that may appear as a challenge. Yoga students should be encouraged to push beyond the first stretch, and take each pose slightly deeper. 

Playing the edge will help students to push beyond the comfort zone, and adventure our perceived confines. Begin by ensuring that the mind is still, and the body calm by evoking a sequence of warmup and stretches.

4. Practicing non-attachment

Vairagya, in other words, non-attachment is a core yoga principle as we have the capacity to detach with our thoughts and see the world as it is – true reality. And for anyone to reach enlightenment, you need to be dispassionate. You need not make a judgment about yourself.

A number of scaffolding poses are used as part of the practice. Students should explore fresh poses without making any judgment throughout these transitions. Low-stake poses such as low squats and moving to high-peak poses like crow pose, then side crow, going to 8-limbed pose, can encourage the learners to practice non-attachment.

5. Being yourself
This is the hardest of all yoga poses. Being yourself is enlightening yourself. Bhagavad Ghita 3.35 states that, “One cannot keep himself on the spiritual path if he abandons the duties born of his true nature. One’s own duty, performed imperfectly, is better than doing another duty perfectly”.

Plan your sequence mainly around the warrior poses to ensure that you empower students and promote self-realization as well. Students can be invited to personalize their asanas focusing on variations including modifications on poses such as the funky tree. 

Apart from the above ideas, as a yoga teacher, you need to lead with your heart. Engage with the learners and find out what actually inspires them to practice yoga. Feel free to share your story, quote, or asana with your students and develop the workshop around it. Go ahead with your passion and everything else will follow.

If you love offering your students more in terms of creating a more mindful yoga experience, I highly recommend No Prep Yoga Plans ((Add your affiliate link). The plans come in both inspirational as well as faith-based (Christian) versions and contain yoga sequences, guided meditation scripts, inspirational and devotional openings, essential oils guide, charts on selecting poses for common ailments, and more. Learn more at No Prep Yoga Plans. ((Add Your Affiliate Link)).

Author Bio: Rhonda Jones is the author of No Prep Yoga Plans, the new yoga teacher’s cliff notes. Rhonda created NPYP after feeling she needed an organized yoga resource book to help her create a transformative yoga class in minutes. NPYP comes in two versions: Inspirational or Faith-Based. Rhonda desires that all new yoga teachers start their yoga careers with confidence and provide seasoned yoga teachers tools for creating a yoga class that ministers to the mind, body, and spirit of every yoga student. 

Nobody Turned Up For My Yoga Class: How to Remedy “No Shows”

by Guest Writer Rhonda Jones

You sit on your mat in front of your studio waiting for the students to start trickling in. It is nearly 6 PM and you have everything from the props to the music set up for what should be an intense but hugely satisfying lesson for your students. But then the minutes start ticking by, 6 pm comes around and no one walks in, maybe they are caught up in traffic, 6:10…. 6:20…. 6:30. No students come in.